To hear – even in the dark. To listen – when we feel silenced. To act – when it would be easier to despair. To love – when hate seems louder. To believe – even now. It is impossible to write this week ...

One of my earliest memories is of reciting the Shema each Sunday morning in heder. Although I didn’t come from a religious family – we were more your traditional three-times-a-year shul-goers – and I ...

Eli Sharabi was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, and taken hostage by Hamas. Sharabi had never recited the Shema. Until he was in Gaza. Even though he was never a religious man ...

The words of the Shema prayer, arguably Judaism’s most fundamental liturgical statement, are not generally associated with the art of magic. But the arrival of a 1,500-year-old silver armband ...

The Shema bookends Yom Kippur. It is dramatically said at Yom Kippur’s onset. While the sentence Baruch Shem Kevod which follows Shema is normatively said quietly, on Yom Kippur it is said aloud.

Shema Yisrael, or the Shema, is the central affirmation of Judaism. The prayer expresses belief in the singularity of God, that is, in God's oneness and incomparability. Though this opening verse is ...

During the Super Bowl, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft took heat on two fronts: one, for owning the team that lost, and two, for airing an ad that quietly infuriated a large portion of the ...

I grew up praying to a god in a language I did not understand. In particular, as an observant Conservative Jewish American (that is, “Conservative Jewish, not “conservative, Jewish”), I grew up ...

In the 15th hour of a shift from hell, Dr Robby went missing. When a medical student found him, in a heap in the pediatric room, he was crying. Under his breath, Robby said “Shema Yisrael, Adonai ...

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